St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1887-07-02

residences uptown, but there is no more
guarantee now than when the Rutgers
and the Beeckmans built that they will
stay IN them. Their sons will mortgage
them or let them, aud 90 to Paris.
fancy, II you can, the Manhattan
Saxon saying to his son, I'm that house
not only was | born, but my father be-
fore me. 1t is the house of our race.
Keep it and hand it down."
Inc moment you understand that New
YORK IS not city of homes, YOU will
have the key to many of its peculiarities
Then you will see why it is the theatres
hug the hotels, for it is the vast restless
hotel life that feeds the places of amuse-
ment. Then you will begin to under
! stand the nOmadic character of its bust
ness population-tieeing at the close of
! day by the hundred thousand to all the
ferries and railroads, pouring into Long
Island, streaming over New JERSEY
hurrying up the Hudson, crowding down
to Staten Island, descending upon all the
suburbs, tired and hungry, for a few hours
| rest.
This daily exodus from the business
portion of the city is paroxysm to
which business itself is mere vawn.
The continual consciousness that the
man has to travel ten or twenty miles
when he is through his days labor in
order to get his nights rest makes his
whole day a nervous one. He is always
afraid that he will not get through in
time. If you stop him in Wall street or
Broad street to speak to him he begins
to look at his watch. This is what the
foreigner has called the absorbing bust
ness Impotence of the New Yorker. But
it is only the haunting fear that he will
miss the train to Englewood or the boat
to Nyack
If ever you should drop during the
day into the centre of what is known as
down town." that is, the dense district
mile long lying below Chambers street,
you will be amazed at the intense activity
of it. A hundred thousand people are
running against each other. 1t is with
the utmost difficulty that you fight your
way from the Herald office to Wall
street. A thousand presses throb and
thrash under the pavements steam
leaks from every grating; an uninter-
rupted iron clamor assails you from all
sides the streets are chOked with en-
tangled vehicles
At seven o'clock in the evening it has
all disappeared A city as large as
Detroit has been deported They have
all fed.
And it is between the hours of five
and seven that the bulk of that popula-
ton has to be transported, and it is
during those two hours that the par
oxysm of getting home occurs Then it
is that the elevated roads are besieged
and the Brooklyn bridge grows black with
people. Everything strains to accommo-
date the rush. Men fight on the stairs
of the elevated stations and cling des-
Derately to the platforms of the horse-cars
Women have the clothes torn from them
in the rush Children are crushed. The
strongest assert their right and fight
their way to seats. The cars are over
loaded. The iron structure of the ele-
waited road groans beneath a burden it
was never meant to carry.
So you will see that the great city is
subject to a pulse of life that is to say
the least abnormal. The great tide
sweeps over it twice day Ebb and
t1ow-ebb and flow all the wear.
Who shall undertake to say how far
these conditions of existence affect the
character and the conduct of New
Y orkers?
One must see that the spirit of unrest
affects everything. And without rest
here can be no reflection and no beauty.
And speaking as critic and not as
New Yorker, | cannot say that New York
S yet beautiful city. Its two most
magnificent streets, Broadway and Fifth
avenue, are beautiful only in the life they
contain or the wealth they represent.
They are stony, treeless highways in a
continual state of metamorphose.
Its immediate suburbs are in continual
tate of unfinished ghastliness. You
lpproach the metropolis of the continent
through acres of sunken lots that are the
eceptacles of the cSty's rubbish; its rocks
re covered with shanties and its levels
With putrid water
And as if to spare the visitor this un-
eemly preface, the New York Central
Dad dives abashed into three miles
# dark tunnel, and Whips the stranger
Up to the Grand Central depot without
him to see much of the beauty
# the approach. NYM CRINKLE.